Christmas Bells
by FelinesAndPhoenixes
Summary: It certainly wasn't the wedding Lisa expected. And no, don't go by the characters. Its not exactly Lisa/Milhouse. You'll see.


**Title: Christmas Bells  
>Author: <br>Summary: It wasn't exactly the wedding she had anticipated.  
>Rating: K<br>Disclaimer: I own nothing that you recognize, and probably some things that you don't. Title is taken from Rent, written by the very talented Jonathan Larson.**

**Challenge from Kat Hawkins, "2000 words, Lisa's wedding". Apparently I'm free to choose the groom, but she said that she wanted Milhouse involved somehow. You don't find out who the groom is until the end, and its angstier than I wanted it to be, and far more serious, but I suppose that its alright**

It definitely wasn't the wedding that she had anticipated when she was a child, or even when she'd gone off to college. She could remember her mother making a comment at some point about how she'd go off to college and find a nice Jewish boyfriend and drop all of her "weird" religious views and life would be grand. But she hadn't exactly. He was, for one, not Jewish. He was, secondly, someone she'd known all of her life practically. It wasn't what she'd anticipated, and she wasn't even sure that it was what she wanted. Something that she'd heard in a musical once came back to her. "Christmas Bells are ringing, somewhere else…not here," she sang softly to herself as she reached up and adjusted the headband that held the veil over her long blonde hair.

She was blessedly alone in the small room at the back of the church. For now at least. The room was cluttered, and she was crammed into the room with a floor length mirror and a bunch of boxes of long forgotten useless items. Clothes and makeup were scattered around the room, and her mother's handbag lay abandoned on the box she'd been sitting on earlier. She'd left to have a word with Bart, one of the ushers. Something about a last minute change.

She stared at herself in the mirror, scrutinizing her appearance. Even Bart had said that she looked beautiful. Which was something. She definitely didn't look anything like Lisa Simpson in the long white dress with antique lace at the cuffs and collar. With a sigh she turned to check the clock on the wall behind her. Her father should be in soon. Hopefully. If he hadn't gotten distracted again. He'd been following the caterers around all morning, swiping food and drinks. Hopefully he wasn't too drunk to walk her down the isle. Not that even Homer Simpson would do something like that on the day of his daughter's wedding. Something else popped into her head. "You come to me on the day of my daughter's wedding….," and she began to giggle helplessly. She wasn't sure when she'd turned into such a girly girl. Surely it hadn't been her time at Yale. At Yale she'd only ever had a few friends, mostly male. One of them, Howard, she'd dated for a while, and he'd asked her to marry him, but it wasn't Howard that she was marrying that day.

The door opened again, and she turned, startled. But it wasn't her fiancé that came in the door, but Milhouse Van Houten. He smiled nervously at her. "Hey, Lis," he muttered. For all the changes in her life, Milhouse was the most changed, she thought. No longer was he the short, scrawny, awkward boy with broken glasses, but a tall, almost confidant man with longish hair swept back into a neat ponytail to keep it off of his face. He was 26 and a lawyer. She was oddly proud of him, having gotten through his bachelor's degree and law school two years faster than he should have been able to. He was oddly brilliant. She was quite proud of him. Not for the first time, she wondered why she'd turned him down when he'd asked her out a few years ago. He'd been 23 and in law school and she'd been 21 and a pre-med major at Yale.

She blinked at him and the spell was broken. "Oh," she muttered. "Milhouse. Hi." She tilted her head at him. "Did you need something?" Milhouse, along with Bart, was one of the ushers. Temporarily. Both boys would be acting as groomsmen, opposite her bridesmaids, friends of hers from Yale. She hadn't really kept up with any of her Springfield friendships. Something else that she was starting to regret. "Milhouse?" she prompted when he hadn't replied.

"Oh!" he said, seeming to be startled out of his own thoughts. "No, I didn't need anything really. I just wanted to….to come and see how you are, and see if you need anything." He came the rest of the way into the room, the door closing softly behind him. "We're almost ready to start. Reverend Lovejoy is getting kind of impatient. And you parents are outside waiting. I told them that I would just be a minute."

"He's just impatient because it's Christmas Eve," Lisa said. "I should never have let my mother talk me into this date." She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. It was somehow awkward to be in the same room as Milhouse, not knowing how either of them really felt about the other. "It is already five. People are going to want to be getting home to their families. Is it snowing?"

He nodded. "Yeah. It's not too bad though. It's pretty." He took a step closer and his eyes swept up and down her form. "You look absolutely gorgeous."

She blushed. "Er, thank you," she muttered back. "But its not….me. None of this. Not this Christmas wedding, not this dress, not _him_." The thing was that she was too apathetic for her own good. She'd let her mother talk her into the wedding date, the dress, the cake, the flowers, everything. As far as the groom, he'd asked her out a year and a half ago. They'd been engaged six months later. She'd always attributed it to the fact that she didn't want to disappoint him, to tell him no. And they had a past history after all. Her mother had almost pushed her into that too. It seemed to be Marge Simpson's desire to have _one _of her children married. Bart had never managed to settle down, and Maggie was only 17. Though she had been seeing the same boy for three years, and had brought him as her date to the wedding. Lisa would have almost preferred for Marge to wait and focus on Maggie. At least she seemed to like her boyfriend. Lisa had rather fallen out of love with her fiancée a while ago. But Marge had told her that all couples went through something similar at some point. She'd said that the love would come back. Lisa doubted it. She couldn't imagine being a doctor and being married to a small town mechanic like him for the rest of her life.

"That's ridiculous," Milhouse supplied. He reached out and idly brushed a stray strand of her hair back from her face. "The dress is gorgeous on you, the wedding is going to be beautiful, and he….well, he isn't perfect, but at least you love him, don't you?"

"Well," Lisa began, biting her lower lip gently. "The thing about that is…"

A knock sounded on the door and her mother's voice came floating into the room, almost impatient. "Lisa? Are you ready? Everyone is waiting."

Milhouse's gaze flashed to the door. "Just a second, Mrs. S," he called. "Lisa." He turned back to her, eyes wide, tone low and urgent. "One more thing before I go, alright?" He looked nervous as hell, pale and fidgety. "If this doesn't work out with him, I want you to know that I'll always be here for you, in whatever capacity you need me. I love you. I've always loved you." He bent down and pressed his lips to hers gently. Of their own accord her arms came up to wrap around his neck as he kissed her. _Damn it, _she thought angrily. _Damn it, damn it, damn it._ "Just so you know," he said hurriedly as he pulled away and ran out of the room, blushing madly.

Lisa turned and glared at her reflection in the mirror. "What the hell do you think you're _doing_?" she hissed at herself. "You're getting _married _today and you're kissing _Milhouse_? This is life, emotions have no place here!" She rolled her eyes at herself and made one last quick adjustment to the veil and stomped out of the room, slamming the door behind her. She shook her head at Marge's inquisitive look and smiled warmly at Homer. "Are you ready, Daddy?"

As she and Homer reached the door of the church, the wedding march started to play. As one the guests stood and turned to look at her. She was almost angry that she was being gawked at like some kind of an object, but dismissed the thought as she and Homer took their first step down the isle. Her mother was smiling proudly from the front of the church, Maggie and her boyfriend sitting on one side of her, Patty and Selma on the other. Her grandfather had died three years ago and it was times like this that she missed him terribly.

They were halfway down the isle when she managed to look up at the alter. Reverend Lovejoy, his graying hair giving him a distinguished appearance, was smiling, bible open in his hands. The bridesmaids were all beaming at her, the ice blue of their dresses reflecting the light madly. Bart was watching her with something like confused pride, and Milhouse was looking at anything but her. Her eyes finally landed on the groom and she smiled slowly as a wave of emotions hit her suddenly. He looked wonderful, sexy, adorable, a thousand other things that she couldn't put into words. He was smiling nervously at her, and she smiled warmly back, almost missing a step. Homer smiled at her reassuringly and managed to keep her moving. Maybe Marge was right. Maybe she was still in love with him. It certainly felt like she was.

She reached the alter and stood staring at him as he reached out and took her hands. His brown hair was long now, held back with a silver clip, and the tie he wore matched his eyes. He was smiling at her with an expression of adoration. Reverend Lovejoy cleared his throat. "Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today in the sight of god to witness the union…."

She spaced out, gaze flickering from her groom to Milhouse. Hopefully she had made the right choice. Hopefully Milhouse wouldn't make a scene. My god, was it possible to love two people at once? Should she even be getting married if she was having these doubts? Her gaze flicked to her mother, who was beaming, but crying into a white silk handkerchief. If nothing else, she was making her parents proud.

"Do you Lisa," Reverend Lovejoy was saying, her name bringing her attention back into the fact that she was in the middle of something and shouldn't be getting distracted. He continued, standard marriage vows. She'd been asked to write her own vows, but had declined. She wouldn't have known what to say, except for that she loved him. As much as she could while being so distracted by wondering whether or not she was in love with two different people.

"I do," she said, smiling quickly at her fiancée, then at her mother, then at the Reverend. Her very soon to be husband squeezed her hands gently and smiled at her. Yes, everything was going to be just fine.

"Do you," Reverend Lovejoy was saying, turning now to the man who she was about to commit to spending the rest of her life with. She was suddenly extremely nervous. Hopefully nothing was going to go wrong.

"I do," he said with a smile. He turned to smile warmly at her parents. Neither of his parents were in attendance. His father was god knows where and his mother was in rehab for her alcoholism.

"If there are any objections," Reverend Lovejoy began. Lisa looked nervously at Milhouse. He opened his mouth as if to speak, closed it again, smiled back. "Then if there is no cause as to why these two should not be wed, I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Muntz. You may now kiss the bride." Nelson smiled and leaned down to kiss his bride. And then, Lisa's new life began.

**Exactly 2,000 words, or so Microsoft word says. Excluding any of my random babble. Just the story. So, this is ridiculous. Its far angstier and more serious than I'd intended, but that's ok. Hopefully its good. I'm not sure. Reviews are appreciated, but not required.**

**Much love,  
>Professor Doctor<strong>


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